If you have signed up to my free course, you will know that it is not spine degeneration that causes your back pain, and that there are things you can do to ease your pain, no matter what diagnosis you have been given.

You will also know why back pain sufferers have lots of other types of temporary pain too. While I was out walking the dog this morning, I was reminded of just how easy it is to eliminate these temporary types of pain – within minutes.

The cause must be related to the fear thing because they always used to last all day – or a few days or weeks – when I worried about them, as I did before I realized what was going on.

When you are out walking about, and have pain, such as foot pain or knee pain, you might be tempted to adjust your gait (the way you walk) or adjust how you distribute your weight, in an attempt to ease the pain.

But I’ve found that if you try and just walk normally, and ignore the pain, the pain goes a lot quicker.

I cannot stress that enough. It’s happened time and time again. It can’t be a co-incidence.

In fact, if I’ve not got people around me I actually play a little game; I pretend that I’m somewhere important, and that I can’t appear to be hobbling about; I’ve got to look professional and dignified, and then I walk in an appropriate way, which would be as normally as possible – even though I’m in pain.

And the pain goes. Within minutes. It really does work.

(If I have got people around me, then it’s even easier to pretend I can walk normally).

A few years ago when I had a bad right knee, I adjusted my gait and ended up hurting my right hip and achilles heel as well, and it still didn’t help the knee pain.

Then I realized what to do, and when it returned the following year, I just walked normally, did the gentle exercises I’ve recommended on this blog, and kept my knee warm and the pain disappeared within a few days.

If you allow the pain to take over, you will walk abnormally for a long time; your pain will worsen and your mobility will deteriorate. Try to nip this behavior in the bud now, and maintain your previous level of fitness.

Do you associate a particular activity with back pain? Or other chronic pain?

Perhaps every time you walk, you have pain. Or when you sit or stand.

I found an interesting site by Eddie who does yoga. He has also discovered that the mind is responsible for a lot of your pain and for making it worse. His teacher told him that the mind always wants to make a big drama out of everything.

In another post The Turning Point, he talks about Dr John Sarno’s book Healing Back Pain, and says that after he read the part about associating a particluar activity with pain, he was able to take measures to prevent it happening in the future. The activity that triggered his pain was sitting. He had spent days avoiding sitting! Imagine how hard that must have been.

But the turning point of the title was when he used affirmations and communicated to his unconscious mind the way Sarno suggests, and it worked. He told himself he was well, and had nothing to fear. He reminded himself by putting up notes all over his house!

Now, that is the sort of stuff you should be doing! – Not complaining about the pain and reaffirming to yourself that you are unwell. Remember, the body cannot heal itself when it is under stress. Don’t add to the stress by telling yourself you are in pain and never going to get better.

It is possible to get better, and these change in attitude and behavior are the first step.

The way you move around has a direct impact on your back pain, and you might not know that you could be making things a lot easier for yourself and relieving your pain simply by changing the way you move.

When I was at school, I had an old 70s-80s Parker jacket like the one in the picture. They were very popular; everyone had them. One day I was walking to school with the hood up, as it was raining. When I got to school a classmate said she saw me on my way to school and called me but I didn’t hear. I asked her where she was and she said outside her house. Well, I knew that I didn’t pass her house directly. I would have been at least 80 feet away on the adjacent street when she saw me, and with the long snorkel Parker hood up, how could she have known it was me?

“I could tell it was you because of your walk” she said. “Oh god – I have my own walk?” I thought. And I did. I was always late and have short legs so I walked fast with huge strides for my size.

When I since suffered back pain for nearly two decades, my walk changed. I could no longer walk fast, and I could no longer walk with huge strides. Sometimes the pain was so bad it was barely an old lady shuffle, and I didn’t even realize this until I got my old walk back again!

Once I was fit and well again and almost totally pain-free, I also noticed that my old, usual walk includes bobbing up and down – the way happy, confident people do!

Have you ever noticed? – Miserable people shuffle along, but happy people bob.

The key is firstly to stop fearing the pain. Be confident that you can walk how you want to and move in a fluid way, rather than a cautious, jerky way.

In addition to walking jerkily, many people with back pain are all tensed up when they move around, especially when they are anticipating pain and fearing it.

And when I say tensed up, I don’t mean in an obvious way where all our muscles are clearly flexed. We can still be tensed up without knowing it. Masseurs find tense spots all the time that the client didn’t know was tense.

One way we can test if we are unconsciously tensed up is to check where our shoulders are. If they are not as low as they can be, then you are most likely tensed up. When you lower your shoulders, you normally also relax other parts automatically.

Of course this tip applies to sitting or standing still as well as moving around, but if you move around while tensed up, your pain will be more severe and you will have little chance of relieving your back pain if you make a habit of this.

Have you ever spoken without moving your mouth (usually when you don’t want to be seen speaking)?

I always think that walking chronic pain sufferers are the equivalent of this. They’re so scared they will make their pain worse, they tense up, walk jerkily and ultimitely end up being in more pain.

There are many difficulties that back pain sufferers face on a daily basis. It’s not just backache people have to contend with. There are many frequent practical and social issues that arise as a result of having back pain. I just found this comedy video that I think sums up one of them.

I often used to have the problem the guy in this video has (no, not his massage therapist’s unorthodox techniques). Sometimes it seems the world is in such a hurry, and full of impatient people.

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